In light of my blogging marathon last month and other writing I’m working on, BLC the blog is going to be somewhat quieter this month and my posts probably far shorter.

That said, we’re now in the thick of the dreaded month long adoption marketing extravaganza known as “National Adoption Awareness Month” (what some term Adoption Beware-ness month,) and as readers know,  in the face of industry propaganda I’m hardly one to hold my tongue.

So rest assured, there will be some posts this month but many will be short and to the point. I’ve no doubt plenty of other Bastards and (original) parents will be going into writing overdrive, so be sure to spend some of this month listening.

As has become an annual custom over the past several years, Pound Pup Legacy has offered up an appropriate kick off to this month’s festivities in the form of the Demons of Adoption Awards.

As I blogged last month when voting began this time around, all the nominees were certainly worthy of the award in their own right, but when the voting had finally concluded, one rose to the top of the pack for the sheer cravenness of its “demonic” activities.

This year’s winner is of course, (drumroll please…)

the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS.)

See the official Pound Pup Legacy announcement:

Joint Council on International Children’s Services recipient of Demons of Adoption Awards 2010

(Though it should be noted, LDS Family Services lost this year by mere votes, running neck and neck until the very end.)

Be sure to read the full Pound Pup Legacy profile piece, as the profile is a very well written recap of just what it is that makes JCICS so very worthy of the award and the attention.

I can think of other forms of attention they and their member agencies should also be afforded, perhaps by law enforcement and congressional committees, but not surprisingly such are hardly the sorts of attention they might enjoy.

For now they should simply sleep better at night knowing that a number of the “little bundles of joy” their industry “re-homed”, along with other voters such as Mothers, felt them worthy enough to expend their one and only vote upon.

Understanding that they engender such deep feelings from the people on the receiving end of their work should mean a great deal to them.

As JCICS no doubt knows, it takes lots of hard work to become loathed enough to reach the top of a pile of Demons like this year’s candidates. After all, it isn’t every organization that can lay claim to having been voted more “Demonic” in the adoption realm than the Mormon church!

Pound Pup Legacy has also done us all a great service in that rather than spread across the various blogs and down in people’s individual posts, PPL has begun a central repository of the names of adoptees who have been abused and killed by their adopters in the past year.

The repository is named “Rohnor’s Angels 2010” in honor of  Christian Rohnor who

may have been the first documented case of lethal abuse in an adoptive family

(At least here in America in the modern period.)

On September 28, 1854. the New York Times ran an article with the title: Murder of an Adopted Child in New-Orleans, describing the abuse and subsequent death of Christian Rohnor, a two-year-old boy, adopted by a couple from New Orleans. Christian Rohnor was locked up in the attic, starved to the point of being completely emaciated, and eventually beaten to death by his adoptive father.

Those of you who know me know I have little use for either demons or angels in terms of a political lexicon relating to these matters. But as these particular “demons” come out at the end of October each year, I’m willing to enjoy their purely metaphoric value.

As for “angels,” again, I’m not particularly enamored of such mythical concepts, but in this case, particularly as I understand what metaphorical content Pound Pup Legacy is trying to instill in a broader audience, I’m willing to accept such language from a purely pragmatic perspective.

On a more personal note though, having spent time in cemeteries around N’awlins (and taken my camera along for the trip, resulting in pix like this)  I’m willing to utilize such on the basis of both their artistic merit and cultural symbolic value.

The tragic roll is made up of five names so far this year:

Rohnor’s Angels 2010:

Colin David Jones: Killed,  Christmas Eve 2009, Loganville, Georgia
Lydia Schatz: Tortured to death, February 6, 2010, Paradise, California
Tristan Dosdall: Beaten to death, March 24, 2010, Peyton, Colorado
Collin Parker William Holdgrafer: Drowned, June 12, 2010, Andrew, Iowa
Kairissa XingJing Mark: Beaten to death, July 1, 2010, Mount Juliet, Tennessee

Be sure to visit the page over time and explore the links to the individual children’s stories.

Sadly if there’s any one thing those of us in this field have learned to count on, it’s that lists like this have a terrible tendency to grow over time.

So let us vow to remember these young victims on this, el Dia de los Muertos.

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/11/01/hallows-may-be-over-but-the-demons-have-arrived-just-in-time-for-national-adoption-awareness-month/feed/ 0 http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/29/another-former-adoptee-rights-demonstration-committee-members-perspective-on-the-current-ard/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/29/another-former-adoptee-rights-demonstration-committee-members-perspective-on-the-current-ard/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:54:35 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=1243 In today’s post, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before; following in Bastardette’s footsteps, I’m going to repost a “special guest blogger’s” work.

My partner, Mike Doughney was also in Philadelphia with me last week and naturally, has his own perspective on the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

He and I have been to adoption conferences and protests together down through the years, and he was also on the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizing committee for last year in New Orleans before we both resigned May 30th, 2008. (He had offered to help with website design and general logistics- rides, moving materials, helping get materials printed, editing, and a host of other odds and ends) for last year’s ARD. He is also a Bastard Nation lifetime member, although both of us made it clear from the outset, our work on last year’s ARD was as “independents” not in any capacity as being ‘with’ Bastard Nation.

He has done the the letter writing and sign holding, presentations at conferences and theorizing, etc. right alongside Bastards and in support of Bastards for more than a decade.

He approaches restoration of Original Birth Certificates adoption work from the perspective of a non-adopted person, yet someone deeply familiar with issues information access (and lack thereof) particularly as it relates to individuals and government. Additionally, he brings a wealth of knowledge about the motivations and tactics of those opposed to OBC access restoration.

When asked at conferences etc. what position in the “adoption pentagon” he occupies, his response tends to be “Sleeps with Bastard” (which was also the original name of his blog.) See his about page for a more general introduction.

In any case, I appreciated the fact that he took the time to sit down and write his perspective on all this, and wanted the broader community to have an opportunity to see what another former ARD committee member had to say about what he saw in Philly.

Originally posted to Mike’s personal blog July 28th:

When adopted people torpedo their own cause

In my last post I directed readers to my partner “Baby Love Child’s” blog, where there’s a rather lengthy, illustrated discussion of a so-called “adoptee rights demonstration” in Philadelphia last week. It’s hard to figure out where to start, since there is much I could comment on from the Sleeps with Bastard perspective. To clarify, I am Sabina’s/Baby Love Child’s partner and I provide some technical assistance with her blog. I’ll first start off with a suitably inflammatory title and these important notes:

1. If you go out on a public street and participate in a political “march” – better yet, an event in a public place that was promoted online and to the media and that even received press coverage prior to the event – others may take your picture and write about your event. They can even write about your event in ways you don’t like. They don’t need your permission or a release from you first, and the legal precedent for this is vast.
2. Traveling to such an event in a public place and watching it – and in fact, never at any point interacting with the event participants – doesn’t constitute “stalking.” Neither does taking pictures of the event and the people who were there and publishing them, particularly when the individuals in the photos are barely recognizable if at all, and in fact, aren’t even individually known to us. So don’t write to us and demand that we remove our pictures of your demonstration from our blogs. We now even have a form letter with which we’ll reject each of these nonsensical requests.
3. If you’re going to accuse people (us) of libel or slander (different legal terms meaning different things, though obviously those making those accusations can’t be bothered to know the differences), you’ll have to demonstrate that something that we wrote or said was actually false. Truth is generally an absolute defense against such claims. Just because statements made a year ago were deleted from various blogs and online forums doesn’t mean copies weren’t saved for later reference to establish what was written at the time. Those who are accusing us of libel and slander have yet to even express an understanding of what we have written, much less show any inaccuracies in our writing. We do, however, disagree strongly with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) organizers and we maintain that the ARD in its present form may have the ultimate effect of actively undermining the cause of obtaining open records for adoptees regardless of its organizers’ and participants’ intentions.
4. Having been completely vilified and attacked at the time for simply withdrawing our (Sabina/BLC and my) support for the ARD one year ago, and writing about that, we will not be considering any future participation in their event in any form. A number of commentators seem to think that some sort of positive engagement with ARD organizers by us is possible. It isn’t. For one example of why that was so, take a look at the comment thread on this July 2008 post from Bastardette’s blog. Commenter “joy” there and elsewhere, Joy Madsen, a current member of the ARD organizing coalition, wrote, “… there is no way we are touching them [Sabina, Marley Greiner, and Bastard Nation] with a 10 foot pole next year, we have learned our lesson. Next year… we are not letting them near us.”
5. For current examples of invective being thrown about by members of the ARD organizing coalition, take a look at this blog post by current committee member Jimm Mandenberg that contains this: “Baby Love-child? BLC? Gimme a break. More like Bitchy Little C*nt.” There’s also, of course, this lovely little blog post by coalition member and alleged “founder” Kali Coultas, who did in fact not bother to show up this year to see her stillborn creation, repeating more falsehoods alleging that there was an organized Bastard Nation campaign against their event (”… BN mocks the very people who would fight hard for them. They… will turn on you in a heartbeat if needed.”) In fact, BN, organizationally, has been silent about the ARD since withdrawing from the coalition over one year ago. Coultas further alleges that by simply operating a blog, or showing up on a Philadelphia street corner to watch, Sabina/BLC “has tried to sabotage the protest from the moment she was asked to leave the committee.” Sabina and I voluntarily resigned, after a number of irregularities and the attempted involvement of an adoption agency in last year’s event came to light, and were never asked to leave, as I discuss below.
6. ARD organizers and its “founder” falsely allege or imply that Sabina and Bastard Nation are conspiring together, by attributing commentary written by Sabina/BLC to Bastard Nation, or by claiming that Sabina was “sent” by BN, as in this by Joy Madsen: “… BN bailed, that was their choice. I mean obviously they are so busy with, with, with, well something I am sure. Not too busy to send nutter BabyCakes to stalk the protest. “ Our only relationship with Bastard Nation is as lifetime members. We do not set policy or otherwise direct the organization. Likewise, Sabina and I are independent and our writings reflect our opinions and not those of any other individuals or organizations.

That said, I’ll throw out a few more points that will perhaps clarify the rest of my comments. These come from a decade of being around activists who’ve worked on these matters in the field of restoring access to original birth certificates, with a track record of success and a great deal of knowledge of the history of these efforts.

1. You might, in fact, want your original birth certificate. That’s great. But if the visuals and words you’re providing to the media and the public are full of “I want my mommy” sorts of messages, when it’s time to deal with an actual bunch of legislators with the power to change the laws, don’t be surprised if they try, instead of the simple act of unsealing birth certificates, to “give you your mommy” by some other means. Namely, through the expansion of “mutual consent” registries with vetoes and the use of intermediaries, both of which insert other parties and institutions – in many cases, the same institutions that promote adoption and have an interest in keeping records sealed – between you and your birth certificate.
2. Likewise, emphasis on finding “my mommy” brings up a whole set of complicating details, that often involve the gross misuse, misunderstanding and outright abuse of the word, “privacy.” So every public discussion that drags in the slightest whiff of the stench of “I want my mommy” gets answered with some intentionally-created-out-of-thin-air obstruction like “We must respect your mommy’s ‘privacy’.” See “mutual-consent” registries, above.

Exhibit A for the above two points is the Philadelphia Inquirer article that accompanied this outright assault on the cause of adoptee rights orchestrated in the form of the so-called “Adoptee Rights Demonstration.” With a photo of a “demonstrator” carrying a sign saying “WHOSE MY MOMMA” – let’s hear it for the organizers who certainly went out of their way to check demonstrators’ signs for horribly stupid, humiliating spelling errors – the article is yet another litany of the manufactured objections to open records by the institutions who have the most to lose from open records, containing no articulation or response to those objections. It makes adoptees look like delusional children.

I understand that some ARD organizers are quite proud of that article. Perhaps they suffer from some problem with gross illiteracy or even simple understanding of what actually appeared in the newspaper; certainly the photo suggests that the ARD has some general difficulty dealing with the English language.

It’s not enough to see yourself reflected in a newspaper article. The rest of the article isn’t about you. It’s about maintaining the status quo of sealed birth certificates; today, much of the function of the press has become maintaining the status quo and ridiculing, mocking and making impotent those who advocate change. ARD, with its childish signs and messaging, fell right into their trap.

---

As I wrote above in # 4 of the first list, Sabina, Bastard Nation, Marley Greiner, and others along with I were attacked and vilified for merely withdrawing our support of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” one year ago and speaking about it. That withdrawal and its aftermath set the stage for what is happening now.

There’s a fundamental difference between those who continued with these demonstrations and us, and that is that we want to see, and work toward, concrete progress toward open records.

Despite many claims that the ARD organizers likewise are working toward open records, as far as I can tell, the ARD organizers are instead solely focused on a (poorly funded and ineffective) presence and awareness raising at this particular yearly conference, hopefully, from their perspective in perpetuity, paid for by others in the community, and a(n attempt at a) street “demonstration” nearby. Neither can be shown to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of producing such progress. Neither has generated any progress over the past year since the first event in New Orleans. (We’ve asked if there is any evidence of progress as a result of ARD 2008. None has been forthcoming. It seems these questions are sidestepped by wild accusations of “slander” and “stalking” directed at us, perhaps because we merely raised this question.)

When the pointlessness of the event became evident to us last year, along with all other irregularities, we pulled out. I’d written on my blog how among other reasons, the active involvement of an adoption agency, which was fundraising by using the demonstration as some kind of marketing opportunity, without our knowledge and consent, and the close relationship between one of the organizers (Amy Burt, aka “Amy Adoptee”) and that agency, fundamentally made this something that I could not be involved with.

But I think there’s a kind of perfect storm here, which starts with a group of people who basically knows nothing about how government works and doesn’t care to learn. (Here’s one such example.) As is true of a lot of noise we see elsewhere, government seems to serve as a kind of sink for complaints that government cannot rectify. “I want my mommy,” clearly front and center among the “demonstrators,” is one such complaint, which is another part of this perfect storm; it’s the personal component. But that won’t get you an open birth certificate because the government can’t get you your mommy for you, nor can it get you your medical records.

The third part is the basic militant ignorance of members of the ARD coalition who, when faced with people who see what they’re doing and choose not to participate (and worse yet, clearly articulate why they refuse to participate), cast them out as outsiders, and lash out at them should they dare comment on their continuing actions which are potentially damaging to, generally, all activists everywhere and the cause of open records. Going to watch, to confirm that the event actually took place, and so that we can knowledgeably and accurately discuss their action, just gets us labeled as “stalkers,” since to them we are clearly already the enemy for simply refusing to participate in what we’ve come to believe is a destructive effort.

There was to have been a ”bastard boot camp,” an educational session that was to have been a core component of the New Orleans ARD event while Bastard Nation was involved with it. BN offered a preliminary educational effort, before people went out on the street or met with legislators, discussing the history of sealed records and open records activism, and what strategies, rhetoric and tactics have been effective in opening records in the states that BN has helped open.

Unfortunately, these plans were met with a clear, militant, outraged, contemptuous response from a subset of ARD organizers, many of whom remain today. They believed that they did not need, nor would they participate in, such an instructional session. It also became clear that we were dealing with a narcissistic bunch of uneducatable, incurious fools who would do whatever they were going to do without regard for how much damage they would do to the cause, both through their uncivil online behavior and their incapability of sticking to a rational focused message that would result in open records legislation instead of some alternative mess like the most recent round in California (to address “privacy”) or state mandated mediators or registries (as an alternate but ineffective method of finding one’s mommy while continuing to empower the adoption industry’s institutions.)

So as for the comments we’re seeing in various threads noting our non-participation and asking why we aren’t involved and actively engaging with the ARD organizers,we have done that, to no avail; this is why we cannot do that, they won’t let us do that, they’ve demonstrated since last year that they will take zero constructive input from us. Unfortunately, their actions, without the involvement of BN or any group of experienced activists who’ve historically worked around this issue, is making adoptee rights activism look ridiculous. That the ARD organizers don’t recognize that that’s what they’re doing, and call any criticism that points that out to them “slander,” makes clear that civil discussion with them is impossible.

---

The fact that ARD leaders completely avoid considering what messages they are sending becomes obvious when they complain that Sabina “attacked” a 13 year old for posting a YouTube video. In fact, if the 13 year olds among this group of adults are coming away from the event with a message, spread all over the net, that continues to infantilize adults as eternal children, incapable of self-defining as mature individuals and political actors – and that, if popularized, will undercut any future efforts to obtain open records – an objection must be raised. This is clearly the message that the next generation gets from ARD – and ARD organizers seem quite pleased with this result!

The creation of a video montage with pictures of adults, and labeling them “forgotten children,” only serves make all future political progress impossible. It plays into the widespread, pre-existing insistence that adoptees will be forever children, without the rights of adults, including the right to an unaltered birth certificate. That ARD organizers are incapable of seeing the problem of this message shows what the ARD has become: a group of narcissistic, blathering, clueless and ultimately ineffectual people, who cannot be bothered to understand that some messages that their participants (regardless of age) come away from the event with will completely undermine any progress toward their alleged goal of opening records. But of course, if the actual goal is completely inwardly focused on this group of individuals, their social interactions, their group’s self-perpetuation, and their issues that would better be handled in therapy rather than out on the street, then we’ll just be seeing more of this, and perhaps, no further progress toward open records for the next few lifetimes, were they to become the sole focus of adoptee activism.

Fortunately, there are viable and experienced alternatives.

Once again, they still have yet to attract a single adoptee rights /open records membership organization as a co-sponsor. (This year, same as last year, their two sponsors include a cafepress shop and a podcast.)

The ARD itself lacks any form of structure beyond a central organizing “coalition” of individuals. It has donors, yet no rights, ability to vote, nor membership structure is implied by such. It lacks any form of formalized organization responsible for it.

When those speaking for the ARD in the booth or writing legislators do so, they speak for themselves, not any larger organization of the Adoptee Rights movement internationally.

(Speaking personally, obviously, I support individual actions. This blog and its independence are examples of that. That said however, it is important to differentiate when one is speaking as an individual from times one speaks for a broader organization or movement. The ARD cannot and does not speak for many of us long term adoptee rights advocates, nor any other formal organization.)

Unfortunately, the financial questions at the core of last year’s event still remain.

Those responsible for this Adoptee Rights Demonstration, the self described “Adoptee Rights Coalition,” to date have not provided any form of accounting for last year’s financial donations: those who gave, how many people donated, how much money, nor how it was spent. They’ve had a year, yet no financial report has been forthcoming.

Such an accounting is particularly important in light of the ARD’s lack of charitable donation status, lack of fiscal agent, and the fact that at least some of the donations from last year went directly into Kali Coultas’s personal account. As the date for last year’s ARD approached, they increasingly had problems with the Paypal account being shut down. There has never been visibility into nor accounting to the broader adoptee rights community as to where their money went.

In essence, those responsible for last year’s ARD asked the broader Adoptee Rights Community to trust them, yet provided no means by which to hold them accountable for either the financial aspects of the event, nor ultimately showing any form of political result. (Which I’ll address here in a minute.)

Monies were collected last year for a full page advertisement in the New Orleans Times Picayune that was to list names of individual supporters of the ARD event in NOLA. No disclaimer was placed on the collection of those monies stating that were not enough collected, or if the monies were needed for other purposes, they could be shifted to other projects. Yet when last year’s event took place, no advertisement was run and no monies were refunded. There was, in fact, no explanation offered.

Sadly the lack of promised advertisement was to be but one example of the complete lack of visibility into the finances of the ARD.

This year is no better. The Paypal donation page linked off the Adoptee Rights Demonstration homepage simply transfers funds to “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” (reference adopteerightsdotnet) an unverifed account.

Since I last wrote about the upcoming event in Philly, the “Adoptee Rights Coalition” (those responsible for the events) have added a few names. It now consists of:

Kali Coultas / Founder

Michelle Edmunds

Joy Madsen

Cathy Robishaw

Heather Holmes

Theresa Hood

Dory Martin

Diane Crossfield

and Jimm Mandenberg

(”Founder” is quite a stretch, considering the pre-existing history with the term “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” and the history of the way Kali ended up with it, but that’s a tale I’ve covered here before.)

Sadly, I think a number well intentioned and very serious about regaining records access people have ended up supporting the ARD. To my thinking at least, there is quite a difference between some of the folks who show up and some of those who can only be described as running the thing.

If you stumbled across it for the first time on facebook, or heard of it via a blog which has picked up the marketing, you may know nothing of the history, the many lingering issues from last year going into this year, or the personal viciousness that took place last year directed at longtime open records activists and Bastard Nation.

Further, as some number of people supporting or participating may be new to adoptee rights work itself, they may have little to measure the effectiveness or lack thereof of the ARD against.

As I mentioned previously on the history link above, clearly the vision for the event itself has changed greatly from Ron Morgan’s original inception. Clearly, by any measure, the current ARD is not the sort of mass action event originally envisioned.

Yet original vision aside, even judging it purely upon what last year’s event set out to do, its effectiveness even by that measure raises serious questions about whether or not the finances and efforts put into such ultimately make sense, or instead distract from the real work to be done.

Part of the disconnect appears to be structural.

Some of those donating do so in hopes of having people go to Philly to go essentially speak and work on their behalf. Meanwhile, those organizing the event are clearly viewing their presence as merely the prelude to what they want people back home to do. Each ends up staring at the other expecting SOMEONE else to do something. Donors want people to speak with their legislators via the purchased booth, those in the booth, apparently think they are collecting contacts for those back home to work on.

What measurable follow up has there been since last year? How many meetings in home districts? How many sponsors were gained? How many pieces of legislation were introduced as a direct result of buying exhibit space in New Orelans? What tangible milestones were marked as a direct result of having done so?

In short, what has been the cost benefit analysis of the strategy of having a few people “marching” on sidewalks without a permit, and buying a booth in the convention center?

While they can claim “contacts were made” has there been any genuine analysis on whether or not who they were talking to were ‘the right people’ or not? I.e. did they connect with people genuinely in a position to get legislation enacted (and did they then begin to work towards such?) or did they expend their time speaking with people with little to no genuine power to enact actual change? Do they even know?

Is this a strategy that actually makes sense? What has doing so done in terms of the goal, restoration of records access to the maximum number of people?

Oh, but wait, IS that their ultimate goal?

Let’s take a look.

As always, all we have are their own words and actions to go by.

From here:

All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

from here:

Our goal is to maintain a presence at the Annual Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

and from here:

We believe an annual presence at the NCSL Summit demonstrates the importance of this issue, and awakens those impacted by secrecy laws and subsequent treatment by states withholding personal information at various vital information offices across the country. A presence inside the booth is crucial to prove the seriousness of our intent to those who need to hear the message.

Let’s be realistic here, what they are discussing is a booth, one of many, all vying for attention and moments of time with staffers and some state legislators in the exhibition hall alongside plenty of other booths attempting exactly the same.

If the people attempting to market open records don’t even understand the difference between their nonsensical term “vital information offices” and state’s vital statistics offices, no amount of paying their entrance fees is going to help gain genuine open records.

Yes, alongside their stated “goal” of being a “presence,” there are other statements about records restoration, but since when did “maintaining a presence” become any kind “goal?”

See, for me? Even back when I was a member of the committee for last year’s ARD (before I and others resigned) a booth at the event was a TACTIC, never a goal.

It was a tactic being utilized towards the goal of records access restoration.

It was never an ends in and of itself. The idea of listing the upcoming cities the NCSL will take place in for the next three years down the side of the webpage under the heading

“Future Adoptee Rights Demonstrations at the NCSL”

means that for those running the ARD, they view this as a habit to get into, an annual vacation to plan on, and an annual event they expect to be able to count on the broader records access community to fund.

Not planned obsolescence.

I was working hard towards the idea of looking forward to the day of not having to booth such an event ever again. I was working towards the day when records access was restored and attending such an event would become unnecessary.

Furthermore, had I participated last year, in the aftermath, there would have been a careful assessment of whether or not the tactic had been successful, what the cost/benefit ratio was, and whether or not repeating such even still made sense. IF going forward, the tactic was to be repeated, there would have to be some very tangible (and marketable to the broader community) results justifying doing so again.

Taking up space at the NCSL as some kind of theraputic annual gathering for online buddies to finally meet one another and drink together, and (for example) listen to jazz musicians that they cannot even bother to get the names of is not genuine activism. It may be a working out of personal issues, and need for friends, but it doesn’t justify an ongoing utilization of the goodwill and pocketbooks of the broader adoptee community.

Vacations and parties and raffles can all be nice things, but if doing so means losing track of the real goal, such that an annual “presence” is suddenly on the list of “goals,” then genuine accomplishment has fallen by the wayside. It’s about keeping one’s eye on the ball, and failure to do so.

Basic messaging seems to be an ongoing problem for the ARD, starting with statements such as this from their demonstration details page:

All Americans, adopted or not, have a right to access government records about their own lives.

which they then immediately contradict:

Adult adoptees in most of the advanced, industrialized nations of the world have unrestricted access to their original birth records as a matter of right. In contrast, adult adoptees in all but six states in the U.S. are forbidden unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates, due to archaic laws that are a legacy of a culture of shame that stigmatized infertility, out-of-wedlock birth and adoption.

Obviously if we ALREADY HAD the right to full access there would be no need to hold an event such as ARD. Adult Adoptees would not have to organize, march, nor lobby for restored records access.

Clearly in our day to day lives we do not experience that equitable treatment that would put us on equal footing with all others.

That would be the entire premise for the ARD itself, yet how do they begin the page describing their event? By essentially saying there is no need for the event (except there is.)

Such self contradictory messaging is hardly the kind of ‘voice’ I would want representing my needs to legislators.

The messaging problems that a number of us brought up prior to our resignation last year still persist, such as the insistence upon utilizing a (family) tree based logo more indicative of search and reunion and personal quest to ‘know one’s roots’ than a rights based or records restoration based visual.

The ongoing conflation of restored records access with search and reunion is front and center in this year’s ARD page via their searchers page, on which they state,

The purpose of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration is to serve as an annual rally for those who care deeply about restoring unconditional access to all Americans. However, we realize that search is an important topic to many involved. To that end, we have compiled the following list of state specific search and reunion links and information.

When several of us pointed out last year that this only served to increase confusion and the tangling of open records with search and reunion, Kali’s excuse was that most of the people coming into the webpage were looking for search and reunion resources.

She wanted to use the provision of “search resources” as a hook to draw people into the page and increase web traffic.

Never mind the fact that genuine records restoration is not about the personal quest to reunite. It is about restoring equitable treatment to a class of people who have been wronged by the State.

Such intentional conflations of the two: records access and search and reunion, only leads to additional conflated legislation such as reunion registries, etc which bypass genuine restored access, and are attempts at placating those enduring inequitable treatment under law.

Worse, the ARD page markets itself towards legislative visitors as well. How they expect legislators unfamiliar with our issues to decipher search and reunion as distinct from records restoration when the supposed advocates thereof place them side by side is beyond me. It’s a ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ visual.

Finally, let’s take a moment to revisit the ongoing issue of the finances.

Lest last year’s troubling pattern of financial decisions not be enough to raise eyebrows, this year’s event features a new troubling twist: a payback for participating for one lucky winner.

This one falls under the heading of things I simply could not make up if I tried. I attended my first large scale national protest event in Washington DC back in 1986. In the 23 years I’ve been ‘doing activism’ I have to say, I’ve never quite run across a one of these:

Prizes to be won in Philly

The Adoptee Rights Committee is pleased to announce a draw to be held *July 22, 2009 *following the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

First prize is a *$100 VISA gift certificate* – always useful for travelers! Second and third prizes will also be awarded. The prizes have been donated by the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers as a way to thank protesters for their much-appreciated participation.

Protesters will be asked to enter their names either at the sign-making party the evening before, or immediately after the demonstration. The drawing will take place at a local restaurant (TBD) following the demonstration, where we will gather for rest, hydration, conversation and camaraderie.

Yup, it’s the ‘please come to Philly, you could win a Visa gift certificate’ pitch! Errrr, ‘come to Philly and fill out our database’ pitch.

Prizes for ‘protesting.’ Bribes for bodies?

As advertised on their Twitterstream:

100 reasons to come to the Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration! http://tr.im/jJB6

That’s bad enough in and off itself, after all, usually, protesters show up all on their own, without any expectation of a potential payoff for having done so, but the real question, once again, lies in the donations.

Are we talking about monies donated out of the ‘coalition’ members own pockets, or are we talking about the ‘coalition’ committee setting aside a portion of the event donations for this purpose?

If the latter, then the question becomes, did those donating to the event understand at the time that a portion of their donation could be used as reward “prize money” for demonstrators?

Usually, when people donate to a cause, they expect the funds to actually be used for the cause itself, not as a form of kickback to participants.

Again, having no explanation of the finances of the ARD, the answer to whether the money came out of donations or personal pockets remains simply unknown.

We can, however look at the few items they list as what donations should be designated towards in their fundraising to date.

The ARD cafepress page for example, lists some of the items the proceeds were to go to (although note that no specific line item budget has ever been released by those responsible for the ARD):

Adoptee Rights Day – July 21, 2009 – Philadelphia

http://www.cafepress.com/AdopteeRightsPA

20% is added to the base price of every item. All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures. Your purchase is deeply appreciated!

Nothing in that about monetary prizes to participants.

Likewise, nothing on the Donate page,

The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration has a base target goal of $2,000 for the protest. This money will be used to pay for permits, security, advertising and materials. For an additional $2,000, we will again be able to afford a booth inside the Convention Center.

Nor their sponsors page.

As “Adoptees Unite “is listed as one of the ARD sponsors, it’s likewise interesting to take a quick visit across to Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change’s cafe press shop:

http://www.cafepress.com/adopteesunite

100% of the profits of sales will be donated to help fund the 2009 Adoptee Rights Protest in Philadelphia.

Despite there being no accounting of where the funding is actually going, they make a final pitch to every individual “protester,”

We are asking protesters to consider supporting the demonstration by making a small $5.00 donation towards expenses. Please note that this donation is not mandatory, and no one will be excluded from the event if they do not donate.

That’s right up there with some of the ‘not required, but suggested’ pay to march ‘activist’ parades.

Again, most events I’ve been supportive of over the years welcome participants and don’t offer up “suggested donation” amounts. If participants chose to give a donation, it tends to come of deep personal conviction, not expectation.

Specifically, this post deals with comments made by an ARD organizer in the aftermath of the event.

***

Gershom’s over on Adopted Jane’s blog rewriting history.

Gerhom’s comment is on Jane’s own blog post about her being banned from the adult adoptees forum as well. I am not going to muck up Jane’s blog with this crap, so I’ll be pointing folks here to this response.

I suppose it’s time to pull out the data, let people read it for themselves, and make up their own minds.

Let’s address some of Gershom’s accusations first:

As an ORIGINAL organizer, BLC hasn’t done anything BUT cry about it and me since I was in New Orleans, and have returned from New Orleans.

Well let’s see, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) in New Orleans was held July 22nd.

Anyone looking at my blog can see I did a piece on the 21st, Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm”. In it, I discussed some background history of the terminology and the event. I also wrote a political criticism of some of the language Gershom was using in the lead up to the event.

IF media decided to do any kind of piece on the event in New Orleans scheduled for the next day, or if other bystanders or even participants were interested, I felt it was important to make some background history available. It was also important to point out that no (inter) national open records or adoptee rights organization had endorsed nor sponsored the event taking place in NOLA.

I also felt it was important that people understand that what had originally been called for was a mass event, not what would come to be 60 (or fewer) people. It was important to judge the ’success’ of the event against the call that had gone out for the event.

On the 22nd itself, after the march and protest portions of the ARD had taken place, I restored posts I had previously written prior to my resignation from the ARD calling for participation in the ARD. See ARD- Baby Love Child earlier ARD posts, history restoration.

On the 23rd, at the urging of my readers, who were searching for information on what happened in New Orleans and finding mere crumbs, I wrote ARD- Morning after media coverage , Afternoon Photo UPDATE. ARD organizers had not put anything out and people we genuinely wondering whether or not the event had even taken place.

On the 24th, I pointed my readers at the ARD page update, (so that they could get it ’straight from the horses….’ well, whereever,) Adoptee Rights Demonstration updates their page, now that it’s mostly over so they could read Gershom’s (and others’) perspectives as well. I didn’t have to agree with their perspective, but I thought it important that my readers read about it from multiple angles and get information directly from those who put it on rather than only second hand sources. Again, I trust my readers to be intelligent enough to make up their own minds about these things.

On the 25th, after the personal attack thread aimed at me on adult adoptees by ARD related individuals, including Gershom, I removed my writings from their ’support’ based board, and posted a brief note to my own blog about what happened to the writings before anyone assumed adult adoptees board administrators had done anything to them. See ARD related – my ‘Adult’ Adoptees posts are no longer available. I only wrote about such on my own blog. The last post I had made to adult adoptees was June 1rst.

I removed my posts from the adult adoptees forum for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being, it was clearly open season on me personally over there. For a ’support’ forum, it was hardly a welcoming, let alone supportive space. I wanted to protect my own work that I had once posted over there, and did not want board administrators, such as Joy who were clearly acting in an antagonistic manner towards me to have an opportunity to in any way delete, alter, or lock down any more of my posts on the forum. I did however, maintain my account there, after removing my own work.

On the 26th Joy ‘releived’ me of my adult adoptees account. I explained to my readers what had happened on my own blog, ARD, Adult Adoptees “relieves” me of my membership.

Gershom attempted to comment on my blog, and I moderated it at the time, saying that yes, I had received her comment would get to it as time allowed. (Later, after Gershom responded to a later post of mine on my blog with the YouTube video and song lyrics to “pepsi anyone” on her personal blog, the gist of which can of course be summed up by the line “I’m gonna keep on I’m a do my own thing”. I ‘reprioritized’ getting back to her comment in light of how pointless such clearly was. You can find a copy of how her blog appeared at the time via google’s cache.)

Her comment, which remains moderated, (as ARD organizers such as Gershom have the rest of net to spew their bile all over, I needn’t add my blog to such real estate) was filled with ‘gems’ such as these:

What does it feel like to be someone who just makes things up in order to prove a point? Do you ever feel concrete at all? Do you wobble when you walk? Do you roll right out of bed when you are sleeping? You must have no solid ground beneath you

and, referring to the thread targeting me on adult adoptees:

I posted in that thread last night, it was long over due and it felt great. I posted a picture of an Attention Whore in honor of you.

While I won’t post details of what was in the adult adoptees thread entitled “Comments to Baby Love Child’s blog that’ll never see the true light of day” as adult adoptees is a private forum, Gershom’s comment above should certainly give readers a feel for the ‘tone’ of the thread before it came down. It was petty, childish, and yes, ARD organizers lashing out and name calling in what was billed as an ‘adoptee support’ forum.

Nor was this the first such instance aimed at me personally there. After I posted my two sentence resignation back at the end of May, Joy and others proceeded to ream me for having done so. Joy (acting as the moderator) eventually went so far as to slap me with a warning, saying:

You go on about your 2 sentences but 2 sentences are enough

(You can read the full text concerning such in my eariler post, My brief statement on what happened on the Adult Adoptees forum.)

The two sentences in question, the ones I posted as the beginning of a thread to the adult adoptees forum (May 31, 2008, at 1:43:44 AM) were:

I and my partner Sleeps with Bastard will not be in N’awlins this July.

I have resigned as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights March/Protest Volunteer Trainer and Head Monitor.

Remarkable, isn’t it? That simply posting those two sentences was enough to kick off a firestorm.

To quote Marley/Bastardette’s comment on my blog post:

Absolutely, BLC. I have no idea where this hatred is spewing from from and why. If one reads the actual thread, the question that pops out immediately is why are they so mad? What in the world did you do that was so wrong? Why would your simple statement of resignation set off one of the worse, if not THE worst trashing of an activist I’ve seen in my 15 years online? Why you are the target of this hate-a-thon is beyond me. This is a perfect example of why the records access has not gotten farther than it has.

July 28th, I posted, again, this time, in response to readers wondering whether or not Abrazo Adoption Associates had actually been present in New Orleans considering the splintering of the ARD organizing committee Abrazo’s fundraising activities (without organizer’s knowledge or consent) had been one cause of. This is the post I wrote, *UPDATED* Abrazo revised fundraising dates, Abrazo related personnel were at the ARD, and Gershom’s comment on such.

All of which is to say, far from “crying” about any of it, I’ve been providing strategic political and tactical analysis, information into the vacuum left by ARD organizers themselves, (as the ARD page certainly wasn’t answering these questions for my readers), and historical perspective.

But back to Gershom’s comment on Jane’s blog, Gershom then goes on to get her chronology ‘tangled’ (to put it as charitably as possible):

In fact, one of the major reasons she was on moderation at AAAFC is her tantrum she tried to throw on AAAFC after she was booted ( before she “resigned” )from the protest organizers list.

(AAAFC, “Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change” is the full title of “Adult Adoptees” AAAFC’s Forum is the venue in question herein.)

The actual chronology was that I resigned from the ARD organizer’s list (no one ‘booted’ me, my partner and I posted our resignations and unsubscribed ourselves the night of May 30th, no one ever asked us to leave, and if anything, we stayed on roughly an extra day after Bastard Nation had withdrawn.), then I posted my two sentence resignation on my blog, Baby Love Child’s resignation and on the adult adoptees forum.

As a result of those two sentences, and that multiple page long thread on adult adoptees, Joy slapped me with the ‘warning’. In part II readers will be able to see the exact post she tagged, keeping in mind, Joy claims my “two sentences are enough.”

Which then leads me to my original posts on the adult adoptees forum in the resignation thread, the ones Gershom just characterized as a “tantrum”. As they are no longer available online, I will continue with my ongoing process of ‘history restoration’ by making them available again in part II.

I’ll leave to to my intelligent readers (as opposed to my delusional readers) to decide for themselves whether or not said comments constitute a “tantrum.” Unfortunately, as adult adoptees is a private forum, I will only be posting my own writings, not the rantings directed at me which were also originally part of the thread.

Suffice it to say, I find Gershom’s characterization disingenuous at best.

(Part II will be posted when I have some time to clean out and reformat the text, it won’t be immediate. It will likely be a few days as this is a busy week for me.)

Sometimes actions speak louder than words.

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration had a “group” of Abrazo related personnel at it according to Gershom. She has written about how they shared a meal together after the demonstration at the convention center. In her post The Protest part 2, Gerhsom stated the following:

I was at the other table with some other protesters including a group from Abrazo Adoption Agency who came to support our cause. Interesting that an adoption agency was there, and the nations so called leading adoptee rights organization….wasn’t?

Well hint!

ONE of the very reason Bastard Nation wasn’t there was sitting right at your own table.

(Yes, obviously, there were simultaneous pre-existing organizing related issues as the Bastard Nation withdrawal statement pointed out:

We have concluded that this is not the time or place for Bastard Nation to take part in a Day for Adoptee Rights. The cost of the event this year spiraled and did not balance with the number of participants coming forward to show our strength to the politicians who hold the keys to the records cabinets.

notably the number of likely attendees when held against the DAR original concept of “mass movement”.)

But ONE of the reasons, BN, wasn’t in New Orleans?

Abrazo Adoption Associates, out of San Antonio, TX was the agency that fundraised off our event (yes, “our” because at the time, Bastard Nation, of which I am a lifetime member, nothing more, and I were also part of the event.)

As always I cannot speak for Bastard Nation, being nothing more than a lifetime member myself, (anymore than I can speak on behalf of other national organizations I’m a part of) but I can point at reasons in both the single statement Bastard Nation has released since withdrawing, and quote some of the personal thinking explained via a personal blog.

To again quote the BN statement:

Moreover, we are concerned with participation of Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas. Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name.

and

These funds went and continue to go directly to the agency, raising huge ethical issues for Bastard Nation and the equal access movement. Records and identity access is about our rights and has no connection with the marketing schemes of adoption agencies. BN has a long-standing, hard-line policy of accepting no support from the adoption industry. Bastard Nation specifically, and the adoptee rights movement in general, cannot and should not be co-opted or used by the adoption industry to promote its own agenda. We disavow all industry involvement in our work. Any entanglement with the adoption industry endangers the integrity and credibility of the adoptee rights movement.

Read this comment thread from June 2, ‘08 on Marley’s (the Executive Chair of Bastard Nation) personal blog, The Daily Bastardette, concerning the BN statement. Keep in mind that her personal comments there must be taken in light of her blog’s disclaimer:

The Daily Bastardette is an independent blog and not connected to any organization.

The discussion between Abrazo’s Executive Director, Elizabeth Jurnovich, b.b.Church/Ron and Marley is quite revealing. Marley makes it clear:

There were two issues: (1) fiscal responsibility/committed attendance. (2) Abrazo piggybacked on it–I think that would be the way to say it. The lead organizer of the event called for a suspension of DAR this year so it could be done right next year. We concurred. A few people disagreed, and went their own way. Some of them are genuinely dedicated to DAR coming off. Others, who had nothing to do with the planning or decision making prefer to spread rumors and gossip and blame Bastard Nation for God knows what, for doing what any responsible organization does–protect its members interests and investments.

Later in the thread Marley addresses Ms. Jurnovich directly about the Abrazo fundraising:

First you solicit funds in DAR’s name without their knowledge and consent. Then you continue to do so knowing the problems this has caused DAR, BN, and the adoptee rights movement in general. You continue to raise funds against DAR’s wishes.

and

To say that DAR or BN doesn’t want to work with natural parents, adoptive aparents, etc. is simply not true. We have plenty of both in our membership. But, we are not interested in helping adoption agencies position themselves and market their products and services in OUR movement. And that, is what your fundraising looks like to a helluva lot of people right now. Do you think for one minute that most activists would be interested in supporting an event which the adoption industry has funded? You wonder why adoptees don’t like the adoption industry This is a perfect example.A Day for Adoptee Rights, whether BN participates in it or not, is about adopted persons, not the industry.

According to a comment Ms. Jurnovich, (the executive director of Abrazo), attempted to post to my partner, Sleeps with Bastard’s moderated blog on June 6th (which he has not approved) the Abrazo fundraising in relation to the ARD event began in February ‘08, not May 9th, as the Facebook fundraising history page had led me to originally believe.

Which means that between February and May 29th Abrazo was fundraising off our event and we had no knowledge of it whatsoever. When we did discover it, by way of Amy, I explored the Abrazo webpage, I could find no link from off the Abrazo webpage into their facebook fundraising.

On May 30th Ron spoke with Ms. Jurnovich on the phone. According to Ron’s report back to the DAR organizers, she refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with Abrazo utilizing our name in their fundraising without our knowledge or consent.

In fact, even after we found out about the fundraising, and had by then contacted Ms. Jurnovich about it, they continued their fundraising into their own agency 501c3 until approximately June 4th, 08.

That means approximately 4 months worth of fundraising, never once so much as mentioning it to Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers. Then close to a week of continuing on even after being spoken with.

It doesn’t matter whether money came in by the bucketload or drips and drabs, the bottom line is Abrazo was doing it without ARD organizers knowledge or consent.

Nor does it matter whether the nuDAR orgnaizers, those left after others withdrew, consented. The monies as originally collected, were collected under shall we say, ‘highly questionable circumstances’ at best.

According to this 12:17am comment by Elizabeth Jurnovich, made to this blog post written by Amy, she claims the contributions were returned to the individuals, but the agency encouraged them to resend the contributions directly into the ARD as individual contributions made by Abrazo related individuals rather than as a single agency contribution.

Please be assured that every dime raised was returned to each donor, with a full explanation of why Abrazo was unable to forward it to Protest organizers as intended.

Abrazo did encourage all donors to subsequently mail contributions directly to the adoptee rights protest (or other groups), but we have no way of knowing whether any did so, given the ill will aroused by Bastard Nation’s attack.

Ms. Jurnovich, (as well as the usual cast of DAR related individuals) also tries to tar Bastard Nation for having integrity and pulling out of the event, in light of Abrazo’s fundraising falsely equating such to an ‘attack’.

So come the actual event, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration in New Orleans, there was Gershom, dining with Abrazo and the group they brought to participate in the ARD.

More than half of the ARD organizers had left in part over the issue of Abrazo’s fundraising off our event/use of our event without ever informing us, much less asking event organizers’ permission to utilize our event in this way. During my time as an ARD organizer Abrazo was certainly not acting as an authorized fiscal agent.

The Abrazo fundraising was one of several reasons, clearly the lack of “mass movement” participation being a critically important SIMULTANEOUS factor.

Ron/b.b.Church, on this Bastardette comment thread, addressing Ms. Jurnovich, made his reasons clear, he has been willing to work with industry in the past,

But I won’t work with people that sandbag me. And that’s what you did.

He elaborated further in his June 5th statement:

In a series of remarkable posts one of the volunteer organizers revealed that Abrazos, a Texas adoption agency, had been fundraising under DAR’s name and had raised over 800 dollars for the event. This volunteer organizer stated she did not know whether this money was intended for DAR or if it was being raised to fund attendance by Abrazos staff and supporters to the event. This information was like a hand grenade thrown into the mix.

The volunteer organizer in question was of course Amy, who had revealed on May 29th to other organizers Abrazo was raising the money on a facebook page AFTER Ron’s call for suspension. (The two events, the call for suspension and Amy’s revelation of the Abrazo fundraising happened within 13 minutes of one another on the organizer’s list, no doubt most organizers reading such got the two one right after the other.)

The Bastard Nation June 1rst withdrawal statement also makes mention of the Abrazo fundraising as one of the simultaneous reasons they had chosen to withdraw:

Moreover, we are concerned with participation of Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas. Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name. http://apps.facebook.com/causes/85456?recruiter_id=15092383

Note that the Abrazo facebook page linked above “open adoption rocks” has changed considerably from the time of DAR organizers realization of it’s existence through Abrazo closing it down, on through to today. For historical purposes, you can see at least the statement they appear to have posted June 4th when the fundraising on facebook appears to have finally ended here in my post ARD- Abrazo finally ends their “open adoption rocks” facebook fundraising. I have yet to go back and pull the wording on the site from the time period when ARD organizers were first discovering it.

My partner, Sleeps with Bastard was even more specific about his take on Abrazo’s actions in his May 31rst post, A very brief comment concerning adoption:

I am not here to promote adoption. I am not here to create events or other means that others coopt so they can continue strip mining pregnant women for product.

This is about getting information out of the state, without compromise. This is not about teaming up with the industry’s marketing efforts that are not about getting information out of the state, but about continuing and growing their business, and nothing else. They will compromise and bargain away unconditional access to OBC’s because they have no stake in those OBC’s, only their business of selling kids on their own terms independent of the state.

The contents of [an adoption agency’s] websites are about the terms by which they move product, not about how bastards everywhere are going to gain their OBC’s.

Be sure to see the full post for related links that detail precisely what he is talking about in the above.

And finally, there’s me, the other organizer who resigned, particularly in light of the Abrazo fundraising. I have had grave concerns about industry co-optation of any form of Bastard organizing to regain our state confiscated materials.

The landscape is such that with international adoption becoming an ever more ’sticky’ proposition what with so many abuses coming to light as of late and ’sending countries’ closing their doors on U.S. Prospective Adopters, many are instead turning to domestic adoption.

And not merely domestic, ‘open adoptions’ so often legally unenforceable, but great for the marketing.

Abrazo is one of the agencies that has focused upon finding a niche market for itself, selling ‘openness’, be that ‘open’ adoption or open records. So much the better if they can find self professed ‘activist’ adoptees, such as Amy to give their ringing endorsements. (see in particular my Amy related portions of this post, Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm” to see her personal endorsement of Abrazo, it too has since been removed from her blogsite.)

Similar to what my partner said, I am not here to work to create events that agencies such as Abrazo can utilize in their own marketing, specifically see pieces such as Abrazo’s Affinity volume XIV number 1 newsletter (pdf) front page. This is what industry co-optation of Bastard voice looks like in practice. This is ARD in use by Abrazo.

They do not define the meaning of Bastard rights, nor what our issues (political, legal or otherwise), nor feelings are. They are at a separate position in the adoption pentagon (Bastards, parents, adoptive parents, agencies/lawyers/intermediaries/lobbyists/industry, and finally the State.) Abrazo occupies the space of agencies/lawyers/intermediaries/lobbyists/industry. Their interests are not our interests.

They cannot speak for us.

I’ve been writing about my concerns with such since for some time now, see my tags, Adoptee Rights Demonstration, and Abrazo Adoption Associates.

And so when nuDAR organizers such as Gershom EMBRACE those who fundraised off us into their own agency 501c3 for months without our knowledge or consent, yes, just as you might reasonably expect, some of us were absolutely not in New Orleans, (with good reason).

Bastard Nation represents a non-industry co-opted Bastard created and Bastard run organization. One where Bastards speak with their own voice, not as photo-op ’set design’ for agency propaganda. (’Cause I think we can all guess what’s gonna run in upcoming Abrazo materials, pretty pictures of them “supporting” adoptees in New Orleans, never mind what they themselves stand to gain by such.)

One is about us working for ourselves, the other is about how adoptees can be used to further the marketing goals of the industry.

When it mattered, BN stood by their principles, that of “accepting no support from the adoption industry,” so much so that when Amy from within the DAR organizers list was advocating for Abrazo and sharing information with them, Bastard Nation executive committee members took the drastic step of unanimously voting Amy off BN’s Legislative Committee. You can find the full text of BN’s letter to Amy, which she first posted on her blog then took down, in my post here. Quoting the most pertinent part:

Bastard Nation has a long time policy of not accepting support from the adoption industry. Without saying, we do not advocate for the adoption industry or any adoption agency or professional within it. You have done both. As an private individual you have the perfect right to do so, but as a member of BN’s Legislative Committee your duty is to uphold BN principles, practices, and integrity.

Your relationship with Abrazo as documented in your own blog, “Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal” posted on June 2, 2008 at 3:51 pm and your actions on the original DAR Action List clearly demonstrate a lack of understanding of and concern for Bastard Nation’s mission, activities, and ethics, as well as the security and integrity of the original DAR. We are astounded that you failed to grasp the ethics and motives of an adoption agency funding the DAR protest, much less their procedure of funneling funds sent to them into their own 501(3)(c) account. This funding was done without the knowledge DAR sponsors and leaders, and would never have been approved had they been informed of the scheme.

We take this step to insure the security of Bastard Nation correspondence and the upholding of our principles and rules.

Bastard Nation has had to make some difficult choices surrounding the ARD trainwreck, but in the end, they stood by their own core values as well as the long term interests of the far broader non-industry co-opted adoptee rights work.

It is vitally important that whether lobbying or doing educational work, the genuine adoptee-centric open records movement be disentangled from industry interests and finances. To do otherwise is not only a conflict of interest, it is to abdicate authentic Bastard voice and the ability to speak genuinely for those in our position of the adoption pentagon.

At the end of the day it’s really a question of whose narrative is it in; them participating in an adoptee narrative or adoptees reduced to props in their narrative? It’s a question of influence, societal privilege, control, political access, and power, and ultimately who has more, adoptees or industry?

Bastards must control their own narratives, else they become typecast actors who may as well be in from central casting, playing out roles predetermined for them, for the use and purposes of others. Not unlike the roles Bastards are so often photographically reduced to be that in online photolistings or in industry marketing materials.

I am not saying that Bastards must ‘go it alone’, we certainly have other potential allies; others who are also in their own distinct ways disempowered, de-voiced, and used. Manufactured iconography has been created of them, things have been done to them, and things are ‘done on behalf of them.’ Likewise, they too, often have little access to political power, or mediums in which their authentic voices and their own narratives can be autonomously controlled. I am speaking of course, of others both within and without adoptionland. Most of all though, Bastards stand with those fighting the abuses and abusers, the corruption and the corrupt within the industry that had such effect upon so many of our lives, (Bastard or otherwise.)

I am talking about addressing systemic structures, and understanding who in those relationships ultimately has power and who doesn’t. Those with the power are those who are in positions to actually utilize a given event, regardless of any other attempted narrative or intent.

It’s not a question of what happened, it’s a question of who is more in position to utilize such; adoptees, or industry? Are adoptees there for themselves, or just to be used yet again, by the likes of Abrazo, whom Gershom has clearly welcomed, even in the aftermath of their actions.

That’s the difference. And that’s a big piece of why I at least, was not in NOLA.

****************

Update July 29th

****************

This evening Abrazo Adoption Associates’ executive director Elizabeth Jurnovich attempted to comment on this post, I have moderated her comment, but will address the pertinent points. In her comment this evening she said:

The February fundraising reference regarded Abrazo’s contribution to the Protest’s newspaper ad, for which Ron sent us his thanks, ;a donation which was openly listed, along with Bastard Nation, for MONTHS before any of you took offense to the Facebook fundraising effort we later launched in May.

So let’s be clear, in this, she is now saying that the February reference which she had made in the attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog (back on June 6th) was in relation to a specific contribution for the newspaper ad. (What Ron or did not in regard to contributions was unknown to me at least.)

If the Abrazo donation was listed, it would have been listed on the page only visible to donors. As I was not a donor directly to the event, I never had any way of seeing such. (I’ve already explained, I was unwilling to give money into Gershom’s personal account with no organizational oversight.) So I at least never saw such a listing. I was unaware of any agency money in the event at the time I was an organizer.

Finally Ms. Jurnovich says in this evening’s attempted comment that as I had noted earlier, from the facebook fundraising history page, it appears to have been created May 9th.

Then there is the explanation of the fundraising she offered in her attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog which was also moderated. It was this eariler June 6th attempted comment from Ms. Jurnovich that I based the above post on. Allow me to again, quote the pertinent portions:

The Facebook Causes application required us to identify a 501c3 to which donations could be directed and the Adoptee Rights March was not an IRS-recognized non-profit (which was why our efforts to encourage our agency clientele to donate via links posted on our website since 2/08 had been largely unsuccessful.) Our agency had already made a donation to the March eariler in the year, as was clearly denoted on the donors’ grid shown on the March’s website,…

The “links” portion in the above was unclear as she was speaking of the facebook fundraising, was she by “links” referring to links (to the ARD website?) or links (to their facebook fundraising?). I believe it’s now clear what she probably intended was links to into the ARD website. The Facebook page would have created months later in May.

Perhaps Ms. Jurnovich could clarify, this then is one question:

Is she saying that 1.Abrazo had made the newspaper ad related donation, 2.AND that Abrazo had links off their website since February encouraging their “agency clientele to donate via links” to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration page, (which was not a nonprofit) and 3. and thus in May they stopped trying to get their members to go over to the ARD page to donate and instead set up their own Facebook fundrainsing page to collect donations into their own agency 501c3?

If so, the facebook fundraising, which apparently began May 9th, still utilized our event without our knowledge or consent.To the best of my knowledge, Abrazo never contacted Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers to mention them having set up the Facebook fundraising without our permission until apparently Ms. Jurnovich first mentioned it to Amy, which Amy then passed along to the rest of us.

Between the two attempted comments Ms. Jurnovich’s own words, lead to a second question:

Is the February fundraising mention in relation to the newspaper ad as Ms. Jurnovich said tonight, or a reference to earlier supposed links off the Abrazo page as she said in the June 6th attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog?

Again, the actual dates of when the Facebook fundraising began are still far less important than the fact that for whatever reason, without ARD organizer’s knowledge or consent at some point, (apparently May 9th) Abrazo set up their own form of fundraising into their own agency 501c3 off our event and it was done without ever once notifying, much less asking permission from Adopee Rights Demonstration organizers.

Even if Ron had been aware of agency money in the ARD, something others of us were not aware of, that hardly granted permission for Abrazo to set up their own fundraising off our event into their agency 501c3 .

These ‘tugs’ are nothing if not ironic as I’m no longer a part of ARD, per my resignation from it back in May.

But since it’s the day after and the ARD page isn’t linking to the coverage, I’ll link across to the two articles so far.

In other words, I suppose I’ve been reluctantly talked into doing what people apparently count on me to do. That said, though, I’ll likewise do what people also count on me to do, analysis. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let’s be clear from the outset, I was not there, I have no firsthand knowledge. I do have some reports, but I’ll focus on the media pieces currently available:

This New Orleans Times Picayune Article, poorly entitled Protesters seek to change laws sealing birth papers came out today, July 23rd.

It mentions “about 60 protesters” took part in the march from Lafayette Park to the Ernest N. Morial convention center.

The ‘adoptee sound bytes’ sounded like this:

For Galliand Adams, Louisiana’s law makes the search for her biological history “incredibly frustrating.”

“I have no idea who I am, and there’s just a big void there,” she said.

Fortunately, Michelle Edmunds was on hand and managed to get at least a bare bones explanation of what open records really are, that made it through into the article:

Other protesters said the laws amount to discrimination.

“This isn’t about searching and reunion. This is about our rights,” said Michelle Edmunds, who came from Canada to join the march.

Unfortunately, this is still pretty bare. I don’t lay such at Michelle’s doorstep, instead, I view it as a lack of educating the reporters on the issues over a period of time leading into the event. Poor articles such as this could have been avoided.

Naturally, to counterweight even such bare bones adoptee demands, the reporter used a quote from the National Council For Adoption (NCFA) (an industry lobby made up of member adoption agencies in Virginia). Their soundbyte, as always co-opting the authentic voice of mothers sounded like this:

“We’re not opposed to open adoption or open records. We’re concerned about the right of privacy for the birth mother,” said Rodney Huey, spokesman for the National Council for Adoption.

“A birth mother, for whatever reason, decided at one point to have her own confidential adoption, and that (confidentiality is) what she was guaranteed,” he said.

For NCFA, which was founded in part to maintain the sealed records system to say they’re not opposed to open records is shall we say, pretty darn interesting. Perhaps we should remind them of this soundbyte the next time we find them lobbying against our open records bills in the states.

In short, a pretty lousy piece. Which is clearly a result of a lack of familiarity with even the basics of what we’re talking about. Use of the term “birth papers” makes it clear, this is turf the reporter clearly hasn’t learned even the basic lingo of. Again, all of which could have been avoided with some work in the run up to the event.

Supposedly there is some photography that went with the article, but it appears not to have made it through to the online edition.

Secondly, perhaps ever so slightly more in keeping with the original history of what was then called the Adoptee Rights Day, the State based focus, Adoptees in New York held their own small event piggybacking on the N’awlins event. This was no doubt to draw attention to the NY bill, still stuck in committee for the third year running.

This was covered in a July 22nd article (yesterday) entitled An emotional call for change there is also video that goes with this piece.

The article explains that they met in the local library:

Local adoptees and birth mothers joined together in the genealogy section of the main library in Downtown Rochester this morning. It’s a place many of them have done research to find their birth parents.

Which then visually tells the audience this is about search and reunion, the article goes on to mention medical records as a possible justification for opening the records:

“It’s strictly to find out your heritage, any birth concerns you might have, any medical problems you feel, (or) if you want to know your ancestry,” said Jeff Hancock, 43, who found out he was adopted just 15 months ago.

Search, reunion, and medical history are all interpersonal issues that are chronologically second (for some people, for others they simply want their papers and will never search, never enter reunion, and never ask parents for information about their medical histories, which of course adoptees would only ever get if the parents consent) to the initial demand that state confiscation of our records must end.

I’ve written extensively about this here on my blog, but this post from June 7th in particular, ARD- Another from the “I hate being right” category- the ‘messaging’ disaster, went into how I was concerned these types of nonsequitor arguments would take center stage in ARD. Again I really hate being right.

This is what happens when adoptees do not have open records 101. They find target settings that undermine the core of the message, that this is ultimately about equality under law.

Medical records simply are not an open records argument. The sooner everyone learns that, is the sooner we can start doing the real work.

They both call it a civil rights issue, and then place themselves into a search venue. A garbled message at best.

In the end, the search and reunion meme wins out and becomes the focus of the article.

Speaking from a purely pragmatic standpoint, our arguments need to be based on both the legal and legislative realities. We’re not going to withstand legal challenges to open records legislation on “But I want to meet my Mommie!” You withstand legal challenges based on how we as a class of people are receiving inequitable treatment under law. We are singled out, and systems created to treat us thusly must be dismantled.

All of which points out how in many ways, serious educational work to get even adoptees on message needs to take place long before an ‘action’ phase is initiated. After all, how the hell are adoptees going to get the media around to what the landscape looks like and what language is appropriate when half the time adoptees themselves don’t even know?

In closing, I am the only one who finds it incredibly ironic that the only print media coverage available online yesterday was about an ARD related event in New York?

<Shakes head, and sighs.>

***

Update

***

I finally got around to digging out the photos. You can find the Times Picayune’s photo gallery here.

Clearly my messaging disaster concerns about those Gladney-120th-anniversary-protest signs “State enforced genetic secrecy kills adoptees” were well founded. Sure enough, guess what was on hand.

Matthew Hinton / Times Picayune

So much for messaging.

<Sigh.>

This is not about dissuading anyone. This is about being aware and showing some respect for where it is you’re headed.

One of the components of the events that I cared deeply about back when I was still working on the event (I am not now) was the fact that this was going to be taking place in N’awlins, a city I care passionately about and yes, a city that even today is still far from ‘back together’.

I advised fellow Bastards going to N’awlins to get up to speed about what peoples’ lives are like there now, in part by reading at bare minimum local ‘mainstream’ media such as the Times Picayne and the Gambit in the run up to the ARD.

More importantly, though, listen to those fighting to retain N’awlins for it’s residents, not just developers.

The city has been changed profoundly in the almost three years since the storm and the flooded aftermath. It’s been used as a hothouse for neocon notions of how to restructure American society (Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” has a useful framework explaining such, and utilizes New Orleans as one case study), in an attempt to shake the city out into a subset of “haves”; tourism built around the French Quarter and St. Charles Ave./parts of uptown neighborhoods, and “have-nots;” not ‘built’ much at all, but everywhere else.

The city is at this very moment a place where matters of survival are still paramount to so many.

A protracted battle where the future of the city is being decided in many cases, not by the neighborhoods, but by those who can tear them down, as part of building their vision of what they think the next New Orleans should be played out against the backdrop of many factors not merely wealth and poverty, nor even a binary notion of “race” (N’awlins has never been merely some matter of “Black and White” it’s a complex gumbo of French and Spanish, Haitians, Free men and former slaves, Cubans, First Nations peoples, and now post-Katrina, particularly Hispanics. All in that Creole, Cajun/Acadian mix. )

And that makes it one hell of a distinct place for adoptees to be trying to do their own efforts on behalf of our own equality.

As I wrote back on January 10th:

How do we do what we need to do in New Orleans while not overlooking or in anyway downplaying the magnitude of the realities New Orleans itself currently faces? On that one, I have no real answer yet. Yeah, it’s going to be strange protesting for open records in a place where day to day fighting for SURVIVAL is a genuine reality. I’m still trying to figure this one out, but the bottom line is we’re there because they’re there- the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Annual Meeting.)

Those still going would do well not be ‘tone deaf’ to the realities of N’awlins.

Don’t be a fly in,-eat only international fast food chains,- do the adoptee hokey pokey- and then fly back out again.

For some of us, going to N’awlins was ALSO about helping N’awlins itself.

If you’ve never been before, sure explore the French Quarter, it is unlike anywhere else in America, BUT also get off the beaten path and find a po-boy at a neighborhood grocery.

Hit a local coffeehouse instead of questing for wherever the nearest Starfucks might be, get out into the neighborhoods and find yourself a corner market, or a PJ’s, a CC’s, Fair Grinds, or go to Neutral Ground among others.

Eat local. Do what you can to help ensure the dollars you spend in N’awlins stay in N’awlins- with those who need it most. And who needs it most may not be readily apparent. Those in need may be, for example in a your waiter in a tuxedo in a fine restaurant in town (who is the third generation in his family to have done so, and is now facing a way of life endangered. See Antoine’s below.)

For that matter, if you can, eat the extraordinary. Tuck in some nice clothes (a good dress, a jacket for the gents) make reservations, and spend an evening doing what for many will be a once in a lifetime meal to remember. There are many restaurants, all of which rely on business like yours to stay alive, each with their own tale of what it took to reopen, but somewhere such as Antoine’s is N’awlins embodied. One will not be coming to your town, or anywhere else for that matter soon. It is an institution woven through the history of the city in ways most visitors never imagine. Every restaurant in N’awlins has its own story of what the storm and the flooded aftermath meant as well as what life was like before the storm. For Antoines, you can catch a mere glimpse of such in articles such as this.

Spend your tourism dollars locally. Tip well. Be kind.

Learn from your time in the city. N’awlins continues to be one of America’s most unique and interesting cities. Take time to listen.

Be respectful of the fact that there are neighbors, family members, and friends who are now spread far and wide, and are missed constantly by those who have chosen to stay and fight for the heart and soul of the city. Some may have left permanently, others are alluded to as ‘visiting a spell’ somewhere else, with hopes that perhaps they may eventually return. While the most immediate areas ARD protesters are going to be in may appear ‘just fine’, there is plenty of the Gulf Coast that has simply been swept away.

This is a place unlike any other.

And then there’s the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center itself. (The Washington Post’s take on the post Katrina history of it has it’s own problems, but does lay out some of the core of it.) and the attempted change of name controversy.

In all, I suppose I’m saying be clueful. Realize that where you’re going to be; speaking about the demand that adoptees receive equal treatment under law in a place where law and even treatment as human beings broke apart.

I’ve never known how to do such under those conditions. But if you’re going to go, do yourself a favour and be aware that for many, it’s about the closest thing to ’sacred ground’ some of us are willing to recognize. It’s not merely a matter of people died there, it’s a matter of people were left to die there, murdered by a complete lack of empathy (and no, I’m not speaking of average people, as but one example the bravery of the ‘Cajun navy’ boat rescuers can attest.)

The city, and its people that still survive today deserve nothing less than your best.

If you haven’t thought about some of that, perhaps you should.

Because ARD, wasn’t only about sign holding and marching, it takes place in a context not a vacuum, it’s going to be in particular places which have pre-existing histories, some both horrific and infuriating, and most of all, it’s in N’awlins.

Be good to my friends down along the River and the Bayous.

In the following, I am basing this timeline on events from the organizer’s list, no doubt many things were happening simultaneously, and individual people may or may not have been aware of each one, further many other details were happening via phone calls and interpersonal e-mails. This is merely the information all ARD/DAR organizers had access to. (Which does not mean each individual organizer was aware of each of the following at the time.)

Also everything in the following is/or has been either already out in public or is paraphrased after first gaining permission to share the details, except the exact times.

Amy’s mention of the Abrazo fundraising to organizers which she had mentioned on her own blog in her piece “Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal” (originally posted June 2nd) has now been been removed and replaced with a new entry. Originally, the entry detailed her “history” with Abrazo.

Originally, it read in part:

I said that there were people raising money to come to the Adoption Rights Protest. I mentioned Abrazos…

As for the times, they are details I have brought to this because they are essential to explaining what happened; the times relate to what was know-able when.

When the list was presented to individual organizers, it was not explained to be ‘private’ or ‘confidential’ in any way (common sense would say such SHOULD have been, but it wasn’t.) Others have also moved many other details from onlist into a variety of spaces both public and private.

All that said, I don’t speak for Bastard Nation. I’m writing merely as myself, based on some of what my perspective was an organizer within ARD/DAR. Actual Executive Committee members with BN no doubt have a far more detailed timeline.

The following is just was what was onlist, available to any of us from the times they were posted. Essentially, this forms the backbone of a lowest common denominator of information available to ARD/DAR original organizers.

To fully understand the impact of Ron’s proposed postponement to try again another year on many ARD/DAR organizers, readers would have to first understand that even going to the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting had been Ron’s idea in the first place.

It was Ron who contacted some of us to work with ARD/DAR, and it was my understanding (speaking only for myself here) that he was to have been the lead organizer on ARD/DAR, yet due to his wife’s illness (among other factors) he had been unable to fully take that on. Many things got left to a less experienced organizer who initially was to been helping him. He was the seasoned activist who wanted to make this happen, further, (again speaking only for myself) he was the activist I knew. So naturally when he assessed the situation and said in essence, let’s try it again at a later date, his words carried great weight.

May 29th 2008

(all times are Eastern)

11am BB Church/Ron proposed a postponement of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration /Day for Adoptee Rights (ARD/DAR) You can see his writing from the 29th included in his June 5th blog entry.

11:13am Amyadoptee mentioned Abrazo Adoption (Associates) had a website up to raise money (around ARD/DAR)

9:41pm I requested a very basic, statement from BN for the organizers list only, as to whether BN was going forward or not, purely so other organizers could base their own decisions on whether they wanted to stay on or not with as many facts as possible. BN being on or off might be a deciding factor for some, and so I thought it was important that in light of Ron’s proposed postponement from that morning, that we hear something from BN (as they were a co-sponsor) about what Bastard Nation intended to do organizationally. I asked for such in part because knowing who was in or out would help all organizers with their own evaluation/assessment process of whether or not it made sense to go forward.

10:36pm Marley (the Executive Chair of Bastard Nation) dictated a very brief (two sentence) private statement for the ARD/DAR organizer list by phone, informing us that BN had voted to withdraw organizational support from the event.

11:14pm I said I would be holding off on my personal decision about whether or not I would continue on with ARD/DAR until after Ron’s call with Abrazo the next day.

May 30th

2:36am and again at 3:42am Marley got her first access to e-mail and sent e-mails to me, which I passed along to the list as she was unable to post to the list directly. (The times represent when the e-mails arrived on list.) The two e-mails she sent out were further clarifications of BN’s organizational decision to the organizers’ list.

11:23pm (After Ron’s call with Abrazo) I resigned and my partner, Sleeps with Bastard, and I removed ourselves from the organizers list.

June 1rst

(late Sunday night/Monday morning)

Bastard Nation’s public announcement on their withdrawal from ARD/DAR went out.

June 5th

I am unaware of when Ron ceased working the the current set of ARD/DAR organizers, but his blog statement went up on the 5th.

Between BN, myself and my partner, and Ron’s withdrawals, that represents more than half of the original organizers on the list leaving.

So yes folks, BOTH Ron’s call for postponement (based on low numbers etc) and Abrazo’s fundraising were definitely ‘in play’ BEFORE Bastard Nation withdrew.

“…since they now have the booth, what does a post-Bastard Nation withdrawal Adoptee Rights Demonstration intend to do with it? I.E. what ‘messaging’ are they going to be taking to legislators and aides, in the name of the broader adoptee rights ‘movement’.

When BN was involved, they were always extremely clear on how search, medical records, etc were not directly related to open records, as such are interpersonal issues that adoptees deal with AFTER they have their own information from the State and without State interference, just like any other person.

See this from BN’s FAQ:

“While we support those adoptees who wish to search for birth relatives and offer resources on our website, http://www.bastards.org/search/, we do not help people search. Our mission relates only to unconditional adoptee access to birth and adoption records. Our concern is the relationship of the adopted person to the state, not to his or her birth or adoptive parents. We believe it is a personal decision whether one wishes to reconnect with birth relatives, one which adoptees should be able to make freely without state interference.”

But now that BN is off, coupled with the recent death of Julia of Julia’s Jam and how the adoption community is dealing with that by conflating her death for lack of access to medical information into the fight for open records (medical records of parents remain confidential, even under open records. Yes, with open records she may have been able to connect with family and asked them to see if a match could be made, etc, but open records do not equate to access to ‘original’ parent’s medical information. Open records are merely about getting access to your own unaltered original birth certificate, or OBC- from the State, not a medical history) it raises concerns about whether or not the people who will be in that booth fully understand what open records are and are not, and whether they will have the skills needed to articulate such clearly.

This was why the Bastard Nation Bastard Boot camp teach-in that was supposed to take place over the events in New Orleans was so vital. The average adoptee simply has never learned the difference between restoring access to our OBCs from the State, and the need for medical information which must be obtained in a secondary step from family members themselves IF THEY CONSENT TO IT.

This is how you ended up with conflated, mismessaged, manglings of actual open records work like the Gladney 120th anniversary protest utilizing slogans such as “…Genetic secrecy kills adoptees.” If this becomes their version of “open records work” it means they don’t know.

And them not knowing is going to hurt all of us in the long run.

All of which is to say, the loss of BN on the ARD/DAR is going to have profound effects.

And it has the potential to really destroy some of the existing open records work that has been ongoing.

I, personally have grave concerns about what will and will not be said in said booth, now that many of the experienced political Bastards with a strong grounding in Bastard politic are out.”

Well, had I bothered to read Joy, on her blog (I am not one of her regular readers), I would have seen the following, If you LOVE an adoptee, originally posted June 3rd

Why we should suffer through the absolute slogging that goes into pulling something like this off?

1. Closed Records Kill

2. There is no such thing as guaranteed anonymity, records seal upon adoption not relinquishment, and unseal upon disruption.

3. The law is on our side. The right to privacy secured by the constitution is the right from privacy from governmental interference in our personal lives, not the right for governmental interference.

4. The government is not in the business of protecting people from the facts of their own life.

5. Human dignity, no person should have to be treated with the indignity of not being allowed to know their own vital statistics.

6. Civil Rights, The Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. the Board of Education that separate is in fact not equal, our rights need to be restored, the codification allowing the creation of a second class of people is unconstitutional.

Okay, that is my short list, I could go on, but why? That is more than enough.

I suppose I’m going to have to spend the time it takes to go point by point about how for example point 1. is conflationism of the worst kind, (see the above.) And further, that from a purely pragmatic stance, when adoptees start basing their arguments on their need for medical records all they get is further crap-o-la like an often optional medical history form added to the stack ‘o forms parents fill out upon relinquishment.

Records remain sealed, the objection has been ‘handled’, and all you’ve done is further conflated your status as adoptees with your demand for confidential medical history from another person. Thus making us appear to be precisely the ‘demanding whining little forever children who NEED and then DEMAND contact with their families of origin’ legislators are forever being warned about by those who benefit by keeping records sealed.

But by all means, just play into that role someone else has already cast you for.

Whatever you do, don’t listen to the years of experience of the existing movement to push for our records restoration that has been carefully studying what arguments work and what don’t in legislative halls for years now.

No, far better to just reinvent that wheel.

Number 2. is a Bastard Nation talking point. BN has been using it for years.

Number 3 would take a book, suffice it to say, the law is clearly NOT on our side. If it were, we wouldn’t be working to change the law in 44 states, now would we?

As for the constitutional right to privacy you allude to- you might want to go back and actually read Roe v. Wade and its companion piece Doe v. Bolton. Then read about the legislative and legal history AFTER 1973, see the ‘76-77 Hyde Amendment battles, 92’s Planned Parenthood v Casey, as but two examples. Part of the entire point of the patchwork of abortion laws across this country is that the courts have found that there are times when the State’s interest overrides a womyn’s autonomy, thus making her a slave to her own anatomy.

(I would argue the courts have found incorrectly, but we’re dealing with the realities on the ground here, at the moment. So no, the law is NOT on our side, that has been the entire point of the year by year eroding away of reproductive autonomy and privacy.)

Number 4., the State is ABSOLUTELY in the business of “protecting” people from the facts of their own lives- Duh! That’s what being a sealed records Bastard is all about! While no, the State shouldn’t be- that hardly changes the fact that at this very moment, it most certainly is in all but 6 states when it comes to access to our original unaltered birth certificates!

5. If you think legislators give a crap about human “dignity” you clearly slept through the entire Terri Schiavo mess. (Yes, I know this a federal example, when we are talking about records restoration as a states issue, while no one state case as of late has perhaps had quite the notoriety of Schiavo’s case, many state legislators have been more than happy to do their own ‘local’ versions of the Schiavo fiasco.) The INDIGNITIES these people and their families have endured at the hands of legislators grandstanding for votes should tell you all you need to know. Indignity is just fine if it helps ‘em come November.

Finally, number 6. Again, if you understood for one moment what historically HAS HAPPENED when adoptees raise even the spectre of conflating our circumstances with those of African Americans and the American legacy of slavery, you’d avoid even the unintended appearance of such like the plague. Adoptees’ circumstances are fundamentally different than many aspects of African American experiences (unless of course, one happens to be an African American Bastard! Then speaking to both would be speaking of one’s own life.), and any attempt to co-opt such history or voice for your own use, let alone the fight for open records disgusts me on a deeply personal level. And to pull that in N’awlins? (This would be me, my blood boiling) THINK for a moment would you?

This is a paragraph I wrote back on January 10th, 2008 in the first BLC post I ever wrote about the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (I’d link it, but the post is no longer visible. I have made it private, at bare minimum until I get some kind of disclaimer up on every post I wrote about ARD before Bastard Nation withdrew.):

Do I have reservations? (Well, will it be New Orleans in July? Yup, and I know what that means. Will lots of Bastards end up looking like a bunch of white faces- unavoidably so, we are after all, what the open market bought- usually white skinned and often blond or fair haired. That’s the very nature of the adoption beast. How do we do what we need to do in New Orleans while not overlooking or in anyway downplaying the magnitude of the realities New Orleans itself currently faces? On that one, I have no real answer yet. Yeah, it’s going to be strange protesting for open records in a place where day to day fighting for SURVIVAL is a genuine reality. I’m still trying to figure this one out, but the bottom line is we’re there because they’re there- the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Annual Meeting.) Oh, you meant HOTEL reservations… none-the-less yes, of course, we have those too!

So, if I set Joy’s list aside, what DO I recommend? How about starting with listening to those who have actually gotten states to open over the last decade since Oregon’s measure 58? Now, am I saying do a state referendum? No each state is unique. But listen and learn from what arguments along those lines have gotten us before.

Now, why would someone (Joy) turn to such legal and court based arguments? Particularly when one is intending to utilize them with legislators not judges?

Could it be because Joy, herself, as someone working on the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, continues to leave a vital question unanswered?

So let’s go back and pull it from this comment thread on Bastardette, I asked Joy then:

You say open records are your focus, so let me ask you publicly; do you personally believe state by state legislative work (BN’s strategy and what DAR originally advocated, particularly since it’s outside the annual meeting of State Legislatures) is the best strategy to work for open records going forward? If not, why are you working with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration whose original intent was exactly that?

Joy proceeded to not answer the question.

So I restated it and put it out again:”

I’ll note you did not answer my question about the very premise of the event itself as originally stated.

Funny about that.

Folks might want to do some follow up on that, since Joy hasn’t answered me yet.

It’s an important question, essentially do those working on it now fully support the premise of the event?

The question continues to linger in the air.

If this is the ‘messaging’ we can come to expect from the post Bastard Nation withdrawal from the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers, we will continue to get more of the same, closed records.

Why?

Because such messaging has been tried before. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

Ron has his statement up. He too, is no longer involved in the Day for Adoptee Rights (/Adoptee Rights Demonstration.)

Again, I advise people go read it in full.

Sadly, the fight for open records itself has also lost a great deal today. To quote Ron:

I am also announcing my retirement from “adoptee politics”, such as it is, although I will still post from time to time on on this blog on issues relating to adoptee rights.

Ron has fought for open records and been a strong voice for Late Discovery Adoptees (see his other blog, Are You Adopted, Are You Sure?) for many years now. His flashes of deep insight into adoption politics and practical wisdom will be sorely missed.

This is the legacy of ARD/DAR, some of the most brilliant people I know feeling there is no longer any way for them to work in the environment that is adoptee ‘rights’.

Here’s wishing you my best Ron, I’ve no doubt you’ll find your own place to leave your mark on this world.

The fight for Bastard dignity and equality was the better for having you beside us.